The fact that these institutions are allowing other smartphones on the network may be bad for RIM’s revenues or it might not. Bank of America for example, is allowing the shift to start in trials, and while the company has a lot of employees, the smartphone industry is growing at a rate that far outpaces the number of these employees shifting.

Does it worry you that your bank may be using a less secure smartphone?

“If the financial sector isn’t going to take security seriously, and use a smartphone that is built from the ground up to keep important data safe, how are we to trust these institutions with our money?”

idiotic. They’re going to focus on actual security, not reputation or tautologies. If the iphone and android is ACTUALLY as, or more secure than the blackberry when it comes to corporate uses, then they should switch. Because they’re clearly superior as smart phones qua smart phones.

If this happens RIM is on the death watch, because Corporate IT departments are inherently followers, waiting for someone else to make the first move. Once the kinks get ironed out, it’s bombs away.

Jeff

Or, maybe it’s because after years of RIM saying even they didn’t have keys to decrypt data, they offered those non-existant keys up to Saudi Arabia?

Granted, that’s not exactly how it worked, but the end result will be the same. Having allowed for one country to read user data means all countries will be allowed one by one.